The Satanic Verses

by kaweah

As Robinson Jeffers prepared the content for The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948), he went a step further than he had in Be Angry At the Sun and Other Poems in forsaking the poetics of beauty and eternity for the politics of the present, even stooping to vulgar name-calling at times. Such petty preoccupation with human affairs was contrary to Jeffers’ mission and spirit, just as Muhammad’s alleged “satanic verses” violated the monotheistic spirit of his ministry.

Jeffers had excused this loss of focus in Be Angry At the Sun, by citing a mandate for the poet to speak his mind:

… it is right that a man’s views be expressed, though the poetry suffer for it. [1]

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At the Birth of an Age

by kaweah

The feature piece of Solstice and Other Poems is the stage poem At the Birth of an Age (CP vol. 2), “derived,” in Jeffers’ words, “from the closing chapters of the Volsung Saga.” This saga is a 13th Century Icelandic chronicle of older Germanic legends. Jeffers’ interest in the Norse sagas was not unique. Ever since Richard Wagner based his great Ring Cycle on a German epic based on the Sagas, these Germanic tales had become a major cultural phenomenon. J. R. R. Tolkien had obviously been influenced by the stories when he wrote his stories about dwarves and cursed rings. Hitler and the Nazis were, faithful to their nationalistic passions, enthralled by the Ring Cycle. The Sagas grew even more popular during the Great Depression. They seem to have given many people—particularly Germanic people—a sense of romance in a former glory at a time when the modern world seemed a profound disappointment. In 1934, Robinson Jeffers began to write At the Birth of an Age and thereby joined this social movement.

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Dear Judas

by kaweah

Dear Judas was a controversial flop, but this was to be expected inasmuch as it depicted Jesus as an aspiring savior who ultimately succumbed to a megalomaniacal God complex, his love for mankind a sort of lust for possession beyond the reach of mere power mongering. Clearly, the subject of Jesus gave Jeffers a stage on which he could put love on trial. Meanwhile, the poem saw Judas as the most devout of Christians. This is hinted at by the title of the poem, for “Dear Judas” can be a description, such as with “a dear friend,” as much as it is an address to indicate the recipient of a statement. It should of course be born in mind that being endearing does not likely make one a hero in Jeffers’ world. Judas is seen by Jeffers, all in all, as a rather pathetic figure. Together, Jesus and Judas represent two aspects of the sickness of Christian love.

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The Trumpet

by kaweah

The Trumpet was published in Poetry in January 1928. It is a poem about power, as can be gleaned from each of its sections:

  1. … the Romans / Rule, and Etruria is finished; … When life grows hateful, there’s power …
  2. Power’s good; if is not always good but power’s good. … the power triumphs. … There is beauty in power also. / You children must widen your minds’ eyes to take mountains … and massed power …
  3. … all these forms of power placed without preference / In the grave arrangement of the evening.
  4. The continent’s a tamed ox, … Powerful and servile; … this helpless / Cataract for power … Therefore we happy masters … celebrate our power.
  5. … your seed shall enjoy wonderful vengeances and suck / The arteries and walk in triumph on the faces.

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Dip Room Blues

by kaweah

Read more about this in Men Without Fear, available at Amazon.

After missing a year of high school to a life-threatening illness, Fred Tarrant would need an extra year to earn his high school diploma. Not a great student to begin with, he found himself falling just short of the credits he needed to graduate. Unwilling to trade discrete favors with one of his teachers, he returned home in 1946, sans diploma, to Saratoga Springs to work at Tarrant Manufacturing. He started in the factory dip room, alone, hooking machine frames onto an electric lift and lowering them into huge vats of paint and thinner, afterward sliding each frame over a thirty-foot drip pan. He did this over and over while, unbeknownst to him, the lift threw sparks here and there, trying its best to set the place on fire.

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Mr. Wrestling

by kaweah

Read more about this in Men Without Fear, available at Amazon.

For many boys at the New York Institute, the man that made self-respect achievable was one Clyde L. Downs of Downsville, Maryland.

When Clyde Downs first came to the Institute in 1929 at age 21, the Institute did not have a wrestling program, and Downs did not come as a wrestling coach. He appears to have been a general physical education coach, engaging students in a variety of activities.

Overbrook School in Philadelphia has been credited with the first wrestling program for blind kids, started in 1929,[3] the very same year that NYI hired Clyde Downs. The Institute would sometimes compete against Overbrook. The Philadelphia-based program was an all-white program, while the New York Institute was integrated. When the two teams met, the Institute’s non-white players were not able to participate, so the Institute was subjected to a handicap. But it seems that in the early years Overbrook had a genuinely superior program. A February 1937 story in Time Magazine describes a 22–5 beating handed to the Institute by Overbrook. By 1942, however, New York Institute students and graduates began to appear at or near the top of regional and national tournaments to a degree that Overbrook never had.

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The Strike of ’43

by kaweah

Read more about this in Men Without Fear, available at Amazon.

When it came to John Jensen’s character, his failures could be as telling as his successes. Fred Tarrant recalls a night when his buddy John was heading out on a big date. Fred, though blind, could see better than John, so John had him inspect his outfit. Fred was impressed with John’s stunning white suit and red boutonnière, and sent John off into the New York night with his full approval. John returned later that night with his white suit splattered with grease, soil, and blood. He had fallen off a train platform en route to his date!

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Blind Guide: Father Sutcliffe

by kaweah

Read more about this in Men Without Fear, available at Amazon.

Father Harry Sutcliffe

Father Harry Sutcliffe

Harry J. Sutcliffe was born in Brooklyn, New York on 10 August 1925. He was delivered premature and lost his sight soon thereafter to an incubator mishap.

The “age of radio” was a special time to be a blind kid. Amateur radio was also a fascination of many blind hobbyists, one of whom was young Harry Sutcliffe. Anthony Mannino describes Sutcliffe’s career as a “ham” operator in his April 1963 Blind American article:

At the age of thirteen the young student became interested in amateur radio, and by the time he was sixteen was a confirmed “ham” operator. He did a great deal of reading of technical material on the subject and studied under the expert teaching of Bob Gunderson, well-known teacher of the blind. During World War II there were fifteen or twenty amateur radio operators at the school, who worked for the Radio Intelligence Division of the Federal Communications Commission, engaged in recording propaganda broadcasts. Young Sutcliffe also worked for the War Emergencies Radio Services of the Office of Civilian Defense of New York, covering telephone failures resulting from attack or other emergencies. For his participation in this important work he was awarded a citation by the late Fiorello LaGuardia, then Mayor of New York City.[1]

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A New Respect for Veils

by kaweah

I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Gretel Murchie Porter (deceased), her brother Barnaby, and Gretel’s son Samuel Goldsmith for their time, patience, and trouble. Thanks to Sam in particular for granting me permission to copy his grandfather’s manuscript “The Veil of Glory,” in order that I might be able to read it. Thanks, finally, to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center for preserving Guy Murchie’s materials and making them available.

I’m a Guy Murchie fan. I respect his popular works on science and though I am no longer a Bahá’í I consider his magnum opus, “The Seven Mysteries of Life,” the best presentation of the Bahá’í Faith ever made for a modern audience. It follows naturally that when I discovered that Murchie had been working on a history of the Bahá’í Faith in his late years (ca. 1980 to 1988) I wanted to see if some hidden gem had been waiting to be discovered; a gem, if nothing else, for Bahá’í readers. Yes, I think I can suspend my disbelief long enough to dig up a gem that is only of value to someone else, but this is easy when the memory of an author whom I admire is involved. Continue reading →